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language: Irish
country: Ireland
year: 2015
form: short fiction
genre(s): literary
dates read: 26.3.25
a few years ago, when Úrscéalta na Gaeilge was published, there was some discussion about the fact that none of the sixteen novels that the critics who contributed to it (fourteen men and two women [eyeroll emoticon]) chose were by women. somewhere in that discussion, though I can’t now find where, Réaltán Ní Leannáin’s short story collection Dílis was named by some critical consensus as the best prose work by a woman published in Irish to date, or at least among the best.
while attempting to find wherever it was that I saw it named, I learned that, unfortunately, Ní Leannáin is on the UK transmisogyny boat; as a result I don’t really want to belabor my review of the collection; this is mainly just to note that I did, in fact, read it. don’t give her your money.
in some ways it reads as a pastiche of realist fiction — the stories are, with one notable exception, predictable but not boring glimpses of various domestic tragedies and struggles (Alzheimer’s, cancer, adultery, sexual abuse, etc.) with some lighthearted ones thrown in for good measure. the style is conversational and engaging if not, for the most part, especially artful — though neither is it trying and failing to be artful. it is what it is.
(the transphobia is also perhaps related to why the only hint of gay characters are two men, one of whom has just died and the other of whom is, implicitly, about to learn that he’s HIV positive, presumably from his “friend” who just died (suddenly/quickly) of “an galar” (the disease/plague), cancer that other people have assumed was connected to his smoking. hm.)
moods: dark, lighthearted, reflective